Agriculture committee  I think that's fair to say. I can't really speak for the organic industry, but that's my sense.

Agriculture committee  If I may say so, I see we have only 20 minutes left, and I'd need two hours to answer your question fully. The tests are very extensive, depending on what we're talking about. For environmental safety, it's a test to discern whether the plants are more weedy than the predecessors, if there are going to be gene-flow issues, if there are going to be allergenicity issues.

Agriculture committee  Absolutely. It's had a very, very positive impact on the environment. I'll give you an example. I sort of touched on it in my presentation around the herbicide-tolerant crops. By the way, you can get herbicide-tolerant crops through traditional breeding and other techniques, but the GM ones dominate the market today.

Agriculture committee  Where does CropLife get its research dollars? They're not our research dollars. It's our members who invest the money to develop these new improved seeds. They're on the hook to pay for all these tests they do, or they get other third parties to do them. It's very expensive. I can't quite remember the number now, but it's something like an average of about $126 million to get a product through the regulatory system over a period of about 10 years.

Agriculture committee  Yes. If I may add, I had a recent conversation with a different audience—same subject—on this proposal about low-level presence. Somebody asked why, if another country has already approved it, we are bothering with any number. Why can't we just approve it and let it in 100%? It's a case of it being safe from a food safety perspective, because the other country has assessed it.

Agriculture committee  If I may add, I could reverse the question and ask you, or anybody who's asking these sorts of questions, what is GM? What does that mean? That's what I was trying to get across in my presentation. There's a certain understanding of what GM means today and from the last few years, and that's going to shift very quickly over time.

Agriculture committee  Not with a lot of predictability, that's right. Absolutely.

Agriculture committee  Maybe I could start with that. As I mentioned in my presentation, the crops that have been genetically modified today have all gone through rigorous regulatory processes, at least in Canada. There have been no negative effects, whether it be environment, livestock feed, or human food-related issues.

Agriculture committee  That's the status quo from a Canadian regulatory perspective and other regulatory organizations. It's very serious for the grain trade. It's unpredictable and it's risky from a commercial perspective.

Agriculture committee  I can't speak for the organic industry, but conversations I have had with organic farmers, who take biotechnology very seriously in terms of dealing with their customers.... By the way, as an association, CropLife Canada—speaking for its members—has absolutely no objection to organic farming.

Agriculture committee  It's important to put this proposed policy into perspective. I think you've grasped that two different thresholds are being proposed. There is this action level which is supposed to take into account dust and pieces of grain or maybe individual grains that are getting commingled.

Agriculture committee  Thank you very much. Good afternoon, everybody. On behalf of CropLife Canada, the trade association representing the manufacturers, developers, and distributors of plant science technologies, including plant biotechnology, I am pleased to appear before you to speak about low-level presence of GM crops in the grain trade, and the need for science-based and pragmatic policies to address this issue.